My first programming courses were all done with pen and paper. Understanding how variables, loops, stacks and so on work was all done by writing the algorithms

My first programming courses were all done with pen and paper. Understanding how variables, loops, stacks and so on work was all done by writing the algorithms, and our first contact with a computer was in order to write some assembly code, after something like 2 months. That's not ideal but you can already learn a lot without actually writing code to a computer. Having access to a programmable calculator or even better to a smartphone would obviously be better. Would he be able to get some kind of no-name android portable media player and write code on that ? A simple google search leads me to QPython, I am sure there are tons of other IDEs running on Android. That might be the best option if he has access to such a device.